Articles tagged with: Geo Group

On the same day that Corrections Corporation of America opened a new 500-bed immigrant detention center in Georgia, Homeland Security officials released a highly anticipated review of detention centers. Accompanied by recommendations and next steps, the review promises better federal oversight and health care in the largely outsourced network of prisons and jails that house a daily average of 32,000 people with pending immigration and refugee status requests.
“The government has recognized that it has a massive system with serious problems, and has identified steps to ameliorate the situation,” …

Business of Detention Reporters Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh were published on The American Prospect site. In their article “Detention Retention,” they examine what enforcement and detention prospects will look like under the Obama administration.
President Obama has tried to split the difference between comprehensive immigration-reform advocates and law-and-order types. But for immigrants in detention, not much has changed since the Bush era…
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There was an uprising at the GEO-run facility Reeves County Detention Center, a medium security prison housing mainly inmates detained for immigration law violations, in Pecos, Texas.
The riot, which involved 1300 prisoners, ended last Saturday after detainees released two prison employees who were held as hostages.
It began when rioting prisoners ignited a fire in one of the facilities’ recreational buildings and were evacuated to an outdoor containment area (the yard). The rioting prisoners took two recreation workers hostage and held them prisoner in the yard, reported the U.S. Customs and Border …

The Nov./Dec. 2008 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas features a report by Renee Feltz examining how immigration officials have teamed up with the Department of Justice, federal judges, and the nation’s largest private prison company to merge immigration and criminal policy. Many undocumented immigrants now face jail time pending their immigration hearing in civil court. The resulting surge in prosecutions is staggering: About 60,000 immigrants will face charges in fiscal year 2008. See PDF of story here: nacla_feltz
Visit NACLA’s website at www.nacla.org

The GEO Group announced today the opening of the 1,500-bed Rio Grande Detention Center (the “Center”) in Laredo, Texas. It will manage the $92.0 million company-owned Center, which will house U.S. Marshals detainees, under a 20-year contract, inclusive of three five-year option periods, with the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee (“OFDT”), according to its press release. GEO expects to complete the intake of detainees by the end of the fourth quarter of 2008, hoping to generate approximately $36.0 million in annualized operating revenues, the company also said.
“The 1,500-bed Rio …

A new 1,500 bed prison on the outskirts of Laredo, Texas will open its doors in early October amid a surge in criminal prosecutions along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to El Manana newspaper.
The nation’s second largest private prison company, Geo Group, has contracted with the U.S. Marshal’s Service to use the new prison to house immigrants convicted as part of Operation Streamline.

Local jails as far as 80 miles away have been crowded with people who crossed the border without proper documents in search of work and their families, only to …